Witness Magazine

It’s on Repeat

By
Poetry•Vol. XXVII No. 3 (Winter 2014)
    – after the painting by JeanPaul Mallozzi

And he is not a ghost who wheels his wheelbarrow down streets long and narrow.

He grips the rose like he grips the rose—

He trusts the viewer will convert his scars into light and trusts the light will reveal the scars.

His face is a landslide.

His light is his light.

And he wishes he were the rose—that quality of light found only in winter.

Billions of neutrinos will pass through his body.

It’s Tuesday, July 18th, 2013.

He questions his two faces—

the introvert and the intruder.

(Red is the only language between them.)

Neil De la Flor
Neil de la Flor is a writer, teacher, photographer, and executive director of the literary organization Reading Queer. His publications include An Elephant's Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press 2013); Sinead O'Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Firewheel Editions 2011), co-authored with Maureen Seaton and winner of the Sentence Book Award; Almost Dorothy (Marsh Hawk Press 2010), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize; Two Thieves and a Liar (Jackleg Press 2013); and the chapbook Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press 2006), both co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass. His website is neildelaflor.com.